After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You As Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan

October 12, 2013

An independent account—in words and pictures—of America’s longest war from the beginning of the end to the end of the beginning.

I traveled deep into Afghanistan—without embedding myself with U.S. soldiers, without insulating myself with flak jackets or armored SUVs—where no one else would (except, of course, Afghans).

I made two trips, the first in the wake of 9/11, the next ten years later, to see what ten years of U.S. occupation had wrought. On the first trip, I was shouting his dispatches into a satellite phone provided by a Los Angeles radio station, attempting to explain that the booming in the background—and sometimes the foreground—were the sounds of an all-out war that no one at home would entirely own up to. Ten years later, the alternative newspapers and radio station that had funded my first trip could no longer afford to send me into harm’s way—so I turned to Kickstarter to fund a groundbreaking effort to publish online a real-time blog of graphic journalism (essentially, a nonfiction comic) documenting what’s really happening on the ground, filed daily by satellite.

The result of my reporting is After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You As Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan—an account of one graphic journalist’s effort to bring the realities of life in twenty-first century Afghanistan to the world the best ways I know how: a mix of travelogue, photography, and comics.

About Ted Rall

Ted Rall is the political cartoonist at ANewDomain.net, editor-in-chief of SkewedNews.net, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is the author of the biography “Trump,” to be published in July 2016.

4 thoughts on “After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You As Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan”

Just finished the book. The good news, it’s GREAT. An honest account that reeks of veracity, teaching lessons every American needs to learn.

The bad news, I’ve tried to get others to read it, and they said they believe the mainstream reporters, that the US did everything it could to liberate Afghanistan from the terrorists and tried to rebuild the country, but the Afghan terrorists blew up all the great stuff the US built for them.

Hey Ted … glad to see a release date for ” … Unembedded in Afghanistan” … Just wondering about fulfillment of the promised “premiums” for those of us who contributed to the Kickstarter campaign for your return to Afghanistan … how about sending a letter to your supporters/contributors which confirms the amount of contribution, and the token of appreciation to be presented to each contributor in return for their support?

Hi, that’s a good idea. I’ll get in touch with the Kickstarter contributors soon to revise the information about the book. The delays have not been my fault, not at all, since the book was pretty much finished two years ago. But nevertheless, people need to know what’s going on.

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